Bottle Feeder

No, it's not some modern sculpture based on the Jonah myth but a mere rubbish bin. This, close by the now closed (temporarily) and somewhat despairing fish tank known as the Deep, is a receptacle for plastic bottles. Someone more eco-friendly and less sceptical than myself might have shown all the do-goody-save-the-panet-from-plastic signs that accompany this but I couldn't be bothered.

When every day seems like yet another Sunday it's difficult to keep track but I believe that the weekend in black and white should be here if not it'll be along shortly.

Déjà vu in black and white

Surely, says meself to meself, I've shown a barge going up the river before and to be sure this very selfsame little boat, sorry ship, Swinderby, was posted way back when life was all so simple. And as is the way of things when you poke at them I find yet another barge doing the upstream adventure. In my defence I like the clouds and the mud in this picture ... and it was taken sometime back and if I don't post it now I never will.

I know it's only Wednesday but The Weekend in Black and White is here.

Cormorant Boat

It shows how much notice I take of my surroundings when I discover that this sculpture, Cormorant Boat by Kate Siddle, recently unveiled on Nelson Street had actually stood for nigh on thirty years  by the Marina. Couldn't have made much of an impression because I don't remember it at all ... anyhow at some point in 2008 it was removed and disappeared for a few years. Where was it? Well you can find out where Hull keeps its works of art in this link.

BBC Proms at the stage in the dock

I mentioned that last Saturday that along with the Hull Folk Festival Hull was also host to the BBC Proms held at the little stage in the old dry dock. Those without tickets could listen from the footbridges at each end or turn on the radio or download it from the wonderful web.

Classical music may not be to everyone's taste and I captured the leader of Hull City Council making a early getaway; perhaps Morris dancing was more his thing. I'm sure he'd cut a fine figure dancing a jig in a shirt and baldrics with knee-length breeches and bell pads or more likely just playing the fool.

You have it to do

It's a strange compulsion I know, a kind of reflection fetish ... Someone puts up a set of windows and you just have to see what reflections they give. So here's what you get from the office windows around the new dry dock stage. Below is what it looked like straight on. This is, of course, the penguin prison and fish farm a.k.a  the Deep.

Apologies for the grainy pictures, entirely my fault.

Weekend Reflections are here.

Deep Blue

Here's a close-up of the nose-cone of the fish tank cum penguin prison known as the Deep. It's still pulling in the hoopleheads and last Monday, the bank holidays, queues were over an hour long, despite (or maybe because of) the vile weather. As you can see the weather has cleared up a bit since then.

Penguin prison window

Anyhow here I am pointing the camera outside the biggest fish tank in the country (possibly in the world, who cares?) to capture these well known Hull landmarks in reflection. This place hires a man with a hawk to scare off the pigeons that have every right to be there (well just wait 'til the seagulls find out about that! That'll be one dead hawk!) while incarcerating penguins from the South Atlantic. What a bunch of humbugs!  Oh yeah this place has blocked my account on Twitter ... alors tant pis! Ou tant mieux!

Weekend reflections are here.

An interesting development

Well, turn your back for a few weeks and all kinds of things can happen. The skeleton of the new C4DI building at the river mouth has gone up like an enormous Meccano set. Plans and drawings are one thing but do not convey how imposing and impressive a building this will be, nor how it complements the Deep's angular construction on the other bank. I like it, it may not be everybody's taste but, no, I think it's just fine.

Deep Piles

It's not all falling down in the old town. At the new C4DI site work is underway to put in the necessary supporting piles. It seems a company called Aarsleff have been given the task of ramming steel into the Humber's muddy shore. Pile driving is not something you can do quietly and the noise from the operation nicely echoes off the Deep's walls. I recorded it just for fun. It's really not pleasant but it took me back to when I was a youngster living in Hartlepool and they built an atomic power station across the way, the pile driving went on for what seemed like two whole years; now that was tiresome.

Know your limitations

This weekend was the Open Heritage Days, when various old buildings and some not so old are open for us public to come in and have a good gawp. Previous years I've either forgotten about or missed it but this year I was in town. Now for some reason I found myself in Holy Trinity Church waiting to go up the tower. I somehow had forgotten my hinky knee and my lifelong fear of heights. So anyway I managed to climb up the medieval spiral staircase and get up on to the roof and forced myself to take a few pictures without completely losing the plot. The further ascent up to the actual top of the tower was, I decided, going too far. Yeah I know, I'm a cowardly wuss. 

Queen Street

Tidal barrier and the Deep

Looking north

No, I ain't going up there, thank you.

Deep Brown Mud

Here's the local penguin farm and fish tank reflected in some glorious mud with yours truly in the shadows.

At the centre of things

Opposite the Deep

Weekend Reflections are here.

Flowers

Along the riverside it's an all too common sight to see these little floral tributes to those who died at sea and also, as  has just been pointed out to me, those whose ashes are scattered on the Humber.

Ppick up a penguin

Imagine, if you can, that you're a flightless bird from the Southern hemisphere used to ranging up to 16 miles a day in the ocean for your food and living in groups of dozens  if not hundreds of your fellow birds. OK I know that being a penguin is not everyone's idea of fun but I expect penguins are having a blast. That is until the concerned conservationists get you in their bleeding heart sights. Then they'll whisk you up to be an exhibit in this state of the art animal prison with a new home that "runs over three floors and features a swimming pool, diving pool, beach area, nesting area and the penguins very own outdoor balcony with views overlooking the River Humber". It's been built with your "penguin comforts in mind". Whoop-de-doo!

From March 3 you can, for a not inconsiderable fee, stand and gawp at five unfortunate Gentoo penguins as they 'perform' for your entertainment in a £750,000 exhibit. The place says it's "For Conservation, not profit" well phooey! This is just a vile crowd puller and nothing whatsoever to do with conservation. At a similar venue in Scarborough the penguins are being dosed with anti-depressants probably to stop them drowning themselves ...

Sammy's Point

The bit of land on the east side of the junction of the river Hull and the Humber, where the Deep is now squatting, was once a large ship yard run by one Martin Samuelson. In the 1850's and 60's about one hundred steam vessels were made here by Martin Samuelson and Co before they sold out to another company and moved onto other business. Samuelson's name however became attached to this spit of land and Sammy's Point it remains.

I came across this oil painting of the shipyard, painted from the other side of the river, on the BBC's site where it is wrongly named (nobody's perfect).

The Weekend in Black and White is here.

Shovette

Nice name for a push tug, Shovette, here moored for some reason by the horse wash.

It's that man again

Old Pip Larkin still running for his train .... He once wrote in an introduction to a book "When your train comes to rest in Paragon Station against a row of docile buffers, you alight with an end-of- the-line sense of freedom ..."  well, maybe so, I can't help feeling the old librarian was taking the proverbial mickey...docile buffers, indeed!.

A local councillor recently criticised Hull's newish fangled rail/bus station as being difficult to navigate if you are a first time visitor. A facetious response would be that the first time visitor is well advised to turn round and go back but I rise above that. Most people seem to want to know how to get to the Deep and, of course, there no signs or if there are I haven't seen them. This aspiring city of culture is incapable of joined up thinking. Seems the ticket office is difficult to find and it's an overall confusing experience.  Oh and the toilets are a pit of hell as well ... go back, I tells yer, go back, go back..

Deep scrap

This view of the Deep from Humber Street is not perhaps the one most visitors see. It's from Humber Street, I actually poked my camera through some gates to take this across the old dry dock that I showed you here. The new Hull local plan produced by the Council (at great cost, I've no doubt) has this area designated for "potential change" now what, I ask you,  does that mean exactly? Anything you want I guess.

Flood barrier gets an overhaul

This is probably the most important piece of kit in the whole city. The flood barrier must have paid for itself many times over in the thirty years it's been working. It's undergoing some maintenance.

You have got think how dumb the citizens of Hull have got to be. I mean, to put up with flooding every year, more than once a year; for eight hundred years; when the answer was to stop the Humber coming up and filling their houses with the North Sea. Still, better late than never.

The Deep is nicely framed in this shot, don't you think?

Oh the shark has pretty teeth dear ....

Und der Haifisch, der hat Zähne,

Und die trägt er im Gesicht.

Und Macheath, der hat ein Messer,

Doch das Messer sieht man nicht

This little beauty stands outside the entrance to the Deep.